Old Gods Expanded

One of my favorite aspects of Crusader Kings 3 is the ability to make your own religions. However, I found that the system in the base game was too limiting to fully allow you to make unique religions. Additionally, I felt that the Norse faith was missing a lot of flavour, even after the Northern Lords expansion. This mod was made to address both these problems.

This mod tries to achieve:
1) Adding flavour to various faiths, making them feel more unique and interesting,
and
2) Give the player more freedom when making/reforming faiths, enabling the player to be more creative.

This mod largely draws inspiration from historical and mythological sources as well as folklore. Additionally, inspirations have been taken from pop-culture. I have tried to stay historically accurate whenever possible. The focus on this mod is roleplay, but balancing the gameplay is something that is worked on continuously.

Do you want more flavour for the faiths in the game? Do you want to make your own unique religions? How about a dragon-worshiping cannibal cult? An assassin cult worshipping Loki? A nature-loving faith dedicated to the Vanir gods? Then this mod is for you!

Currently the mod covers:

• Ásatrú
• Vidilism
• Slavic paganism
• Taltosism
• Tengriism
• Scythian religion
• Kemetism
• Mandé

Additionally, these faiths have recieved new content but are not fully expanded on yet:

• Hellenism
• Judaism (Kuzarism, Hellenistic judaism)
• Christianity (Krstjani, Coptic)
• Dualism (Basilideanism)

This mod is constantly expanding, and new faiths are being worked on! Long term goal is to cover all faiths in CK3. Hellenism, Celtic paganism, Taoism and many more faiths are planned down the line, as well as the major religions such as Christianity and Islam.

• New faiths
• Adds over 100 new core tenets for the covered faiths (see more details below)
• Increases the maximum core tenet limit to 20, allowing you to fully make your own religion without compromise.
• New game rule that lets you choose how many tenets faiths start with (7 or 3)
• New doctrines (slavery, monsters)
• More faith icons (for the covered religions)
• More CoA emblems.
• Adds new game rule, allowing you to decide if magic should be treated as superstition or something real. If played with magic as real, witches get access to magic spells (mostly based on myth and folklore).
• Many more smaller changes

As mentioned, the mod includes a total of over 100 tenets. Some are visible only for select faiths, others can be seen when hybridizing with the faith (see below) and some can be used by any faith. There are too many tenets to summarize them here but some features include:

Patron Gods in the base game has a limited selection of gods to worship, and is only available for Asatru and Hinduism. The version in this mod increases the list of gods, allowing you to worship more obscure gods. It also adds versions of Patron Gods to other faiths.

Various tenets have been added to let the faithful celebrate religious celebrations and rituals. These are taken by decisions. The rule of thumb is that partaking in rituals earns you piety.

Throughout history, several king and heroes claim to be descendants of various deities. This mod adds these bloodlines as traits (e.g. Blood of Odin, blood of Ra, etc.) available in the character creator. In turn these tenets make those traits virtues. This allows you to make your bloodline be considered holy.

In vanilla CK3, religious syncretism are handled in tenets that group together large groups of faiths, such as Syncretic Folk Traditions and Eastern Syncretism. This mod adds tenets that allows you to be more specific about which faith it is syncretic with. These faiths will have a better opinion bonus compared to the wider vanilla tenets, as well unlocking faith-specific tenets, allowing you to fuse religious ideas between faiths.

Determines the faith’s attitude towards forced labour. If allowed, you may take prisoners as thralls (slaves). The thralls can then either be put to work or sold for gold. There are various versions of this doctrine, some are unique to different faiths.

Determines if faith practices animal sacrifice, and if so what type of animals are sacrificed,

Determines if faith practices circumcision, and to what degree.

A group of several doctrines which enables you to determine what food your believers can and cannot eat.

Allows you to customise the clothing choices of your believers, and allows you to mix-and-match styles.

For Slavic faiths, this doctrine determines the attitude towards monsters. If viewed negatively, ai rulers may offer contracts to adventurers to kill monsters. If the player has the "historical" option for the Magic rule, monsters have a rational explanation, for example werewolves being just wolves. However, if they choose the "mythical" option, monsters are real and much more dangerous.

As previously mentioned, the long term goal is to cover all faiths in the game, and possibly even more. If you wish to contribute to the project, or help with ideas or feedback, you are welcome to join the discord channel[discord.gg]

*Ethnicities and Portraits Expanded (EPE) patch
*More Bookmarks + patch – OUTDATED, updated planned
* MB+/MPE Catholic Trinity – Thank you tony_sm!
* Old Gods Expanded – MB+ Catholic Trinity Patch – Also thank you tony_sm!

* Cities of Wonder 3 – The issue where all holdings turn into pyramids have been fixed, and the mods should be compatible now.

Known compatibility issues:
* Most other mods that change religions/religious system

*Chinese – Thanks to 伊恩 !
*Russian – Thanks to Winwolf !
*German – Thanks to Ravyn !

* När Man Talar om Trollen podcast[www.patreon.com] – for being a great source for information as well as sharing artwork.
* Karax and everyone who worked on the More Tenet Slots mod – which this mod was built on.
* Everyone on the CK3 modding Discord – for helping out and answering questions
* Jonas Lau Markussen[jonaslaumarkussen.com] – for the artwork he has shared online.
* Owlcoholic/Rewinged and Bronze Age Reborn team for the Ancient Egyptian clothing.
* Faith Icon Collection mod by AlphaQmaster
* OB-LIX Original Music [pixabay.com] for the music in the trailer